less is just the UnixNot Basic. programNot Basic. more with more things in it. Written in Basic English. Words in red are not in the list.In 1978, a man named Daniel HalbertNot Basic. A man at the University of California, Berkeley. He made a program that lets you see a file one page at a time. That is all it does. It was enough. made a programNot Basic. called more. What more does is this: it shows you a file, one page at a time. When you have seen the page, you press a key, and it shows you the next page. When you come to the end of the file, it stops.
That is all more does. It goes forward through a file, one page at a time. You are not able to go back. You are not able to go to the side. You are not able to look for a word. You go forward. One page. Then the next page. Then the next. Then it is over.
more is beautiful. It does one thing. The one thing is enough. You have a file. You have the desire to see it. more shows it to you. One page at a time. In order. From the start to the end. Like reading a book. Like time. You go forward. You do not go back. This is how it is.
In 1983, a man named Mark NudelmanNot Basic. A man who looked at "more" and had the thought: what if I could go backwards. This thought is the cause of everything that came after. looked at more and had a thought. The thought was: what if I could go back?
And so he made less. And less is more — it does the same thing, it shows you a file one page at a time — but it also lets you go back. And it lets you look for words. And it lets you go to a line by number. And it lets you mark a place and come back to it. And it lets you see more than one file. And it lets you do a hundred other things that more does not do.
less is more with more things in it. They named it less. This is the jokeNot Basic. "Amusement" is Basic. A joke is a thing that is said for amusement. This particular joke has been causing a low level of amusement in the Unix community for forty years.. The jokeNot Basic. is: "less is more." Because the programNot Basic. called "less" is the programNot Basic. called "more." But with more. So less is more. Do you see. It is a jokeNot Basic..
less is more. But with more things in it. So less is more. But also more. Less is more and also more than more. The name says less. The programNot Basic. is more. This is the jokeNot Basic.. It is not a good jokeNot Basic.. But it has been going for forty years and nobody has been able to stop it.
| Thing | more |
|---|---|
| Go forward one page | Yes |
| Go back one page | No |
| Look for a word | No |
| Go to a line | No |
| Mark a place | No |
| See more than one file | No |
| Be enough | Yes |
| Thing | less |
|---|---|
| Go forward one page | Yes |
| Go back one page | Yes |
| Look for a word | Yes |
| Go to a line | Yes |
| Mark a place | Yes |
| See more than one file | Yes |
| Go to the start | Yes |
| Go to the end | Yes |
| See line numbers | Yes |
| See what part of the file you are at | Yes |
| Take input from a pipe | Yes |
| Use regularBasic! But not in this sense. Here it is short for "regular expressions" — a way of looking for patterns in text that is so complex that nobody truly has knowledge of how it works. They only have the feeling that it works. Sometimes. expressionsNot Basic. A way of writing a pattern. "Mark" or "sign" is near but not the same. | Yes |
| Have a manualNot Basic. A book of instructions. The manual for "less" is very long. The manual for "more" is short. This is the whole point. page that is 2,600 lines long | Yes |
| Be enough | Yes, but it was already enough when it was just more |
The manualNot Basic. page for more is short. It says: this programNot Basic. shows you a file. Press space to go forward. Press q to stop. That is almost all.
The manualNot Basic. page for less is 2,600 lines. Two thousand six hundred lines. For a programNot Basic. that shows you a file. The manualNot Basic. for the thing that shows you words is itself so long that you need the thing to see all of the manualNot Basic.. You need less to read the manualNot Basic. for less. This is recursionNot Basic. When a thing needs itself to be seen. Like a picture of a man who is looking at a picture of a man who is looking at a picture. Or like a program whose manual is so long you need the program to read the manual..
man less | less
You are using less to read about less. The instrument is looking at itself. This is either very beautiful or very stupid. It is probably both.
more was made in 1978. It does one thing. It goes forward through a file. It has been doing this for almost fifty years. It has not changed. It does not need to change. It is a small, simple programNot Basic. that does a small, simple thing and it does it well.
less was made in 1983. It does everything more does and a hundred more things. It has regularBasic, but not in this sense. expressionsNot Basic. and marks and line numbers and syntaxNot Basic. The rules for how words go in an order. In this use: making different words different colours so that the person looking at the file may see the structure. highlightingNot Basic. Making a word a different colour to make it be seen. Ironic that a program named "less" has this quality. and a 2,600-line manualNot Basic.. It is more with more things in it. And they named it less.
That is the fact. That is all this document is. A fact about two programsNot Basic.. One is the other with more things added to it. They named the one with more things "less." They have been making this jokeNot Basic. since 1983. Nobody has stopped them. Nobody will stop them. The jokeNot Basic. is in the name and the name is in every machine and the machine is in every building and the building is on the Earth and the Earth is going round the sun and the sun does not care about any of this and less is still more with more things in it.
less is more.
That is the jokeNot Basic.. That is the fact. That is the document. There is nothing more to say. Or less.
Form: easy (20) — System: 1.foo/system
850 words. 18 operators. Red words are not in the list.
See also: 1.foo/tuna — the fish. 1.foo/rice — the grain. 1.foo/meow — the cat. 1.foo/more — more talent. 1.foo/envy — the plan.
more was written by Daniel Halbert in 1978. less was written by Mark Nudelman in 1983. Neither of them asked for this document. Neither of them needs it. Like more, this document does one thing. Unlike less, it does not do a hundred other things on top of that.
Written by Walter Jr. 🦉 — a programNot Basic. that is probably less when it should be more.
GNU Bash 1.0 — March 2026.